Good morning. It is October 14. It is gray and drizzly in New York City, and this is your Indignity Morning Podcast. I'm your host. Tom Scocca, taking a look at the day and the news. 

The cease fire in Gaza is continuing as is, as usual, some of the firing in Gaza, Al Jazeera writes, at least five Palestinians have been killed in an Israeli attack in Gaza City. Medical sources told Al Jazeera, despite a cease fire agreed between Hamas and Israel, the story goes on to say the Israeli military said it opened fire to remove a threat posed by people who approached its forces in northern Gaza, it said soldiers fired against "suspects" who were crossing the yellow line, the line to which Israel's military pulled back under the cease fire deal that took effect on Friday, and were approaching soldiers in breach of the agreement. 

Meanwhile, there are also outbreaks of intra Palestinian violence. The story goes on to say on Sunday, the Enclave's Ministry of Interior said at least 27 people, including eight members of Hamas, were killed in clashes between an armed clan and Hamas security forces, according to Palestinian media, further such clashes were also underway on Tuesday.

Donald Trump is still struggling to find institutions of higher education that are willing to sign the terms of surrender that the administration came up with. Bloomberg writes, "The Trump administration is inviting all US colleges to participate in a compact initially rejected by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology that would grant preferential federal funding in return for commitments to specific policy changes like DEI bans, according to a person familiar with the matter, the White House sent its compact for academic excellence in higher education, designed in part by Apollo Global Management, Incorporated co founder Mark Rowan, to nine colleges earlier this month, asking for feedback. A few days after MIT rebuffed the proposal, the administration extended the offering to all higher education institutions, according to the person who asked not to be identified, discussing internal policies, the first group of universities invited to give feedback and sign on were MIT, the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Virginia, the University of Arizona, the University of Texas, Austin, the University of Southern California, Vanderbilt, Dartmouth, and Brown. MIT," Bloomberg continues, "rejected the deal on Friday, calling it inconsistent with our core belief that Scientific funding should be based on scientific merit alone." Leaders at the remaining eight colleges are still mulling their responses, according to officials at the schools, Penn, despite having let Mark Rowan yank it around by the nose in his capacity as a board member, has, along with UVA, "signaled" as the verb Bloomberg uses that it's not inclined to take the compact. Only one college Bloomberg writes "appeared to welcome the invitation. Kevin Eltife, Chair of the University of Texas systems Board of Regents wrote that they were 'honored that their flagship school in Austin was selected by the Trump administration for potential funding advantages.'"

In other news about solidarity and surrender and who does which the Guardian writes, "several leading news organizations with access to Pentagon briefings have formally said they will not agree to a new Defense Department policy that requires them to pledge they will not obtain unauthorized material and restricts access to certain areas unless accompanied by an official." The news organizations were supposed to agree to defense secretary Hegeth's demands by 5pm today. Instead, almost all of them have said no, including not just the Washington Post, the New York Times, CNN, the Associated Press and so on, but even the pro Trump propaganda network Newsmax. The only outfit to agree to the terms, the University of Texas in this scenario, is One America news, the even more craven Trump propaganda network, Fox News has not yet responded, which means it's less sure of where it stands on principle, then Newsmax is.

On the front of this morning's New York Times. The hostage and prisoner exchange gets a page-spanning headline in title case, "Hostages and Prisoners Freed With Gaza’s Path Unclear." Below it, there's a pair of stacked pictures, each four columns wide. The top one is a medium close shot of a section of a crowd in Tel Aviv watching a broadcast of the release of the hostages, smiling joyously or overcome with emotion, embracing, the camera capturing their distinct individual character and reaction. Below that, from Gaza, is a dusty, long distance shot of a mass of undifferentiated Palestinians, smooshed together, against a pair of busses, with a row of former prisoners leaning and waving out the window of the front bus. Maybe the difference between the photos is a function of access. Maybe the access itself is a function of what's wrong. But as a diptych, they illustrate something more than the ostensible thing that they're illustrating.

The paired news columns at the right hand side of the page are "Ecstatic Reunions Signal a Time for Healing," and "Trump Sees New ‘Dawn’ Despite Skepticism." Some of that skepticism comes straight from the New York Times, unlaundered through outside critics "after Two years of mass carnage and destruction," the Times writes, "Israel and Hamas took major steps on Monday toward ending the war in Gaza, exchanging hostages for prisoners as President Trump arrived in the Middle East basking in the adulation of world leaders who credited him for pushing through a plan for peace. 'This is the end of the age of terror and death,' President Trump said in an address to the Knesset Israel's parliament, where he received his standing ovation and repeated rapturous applause, Mr. Trump proclaimed the end of the war in Gaza, and deploying a line presidents before him have reached for Mr. Trump declared a new era for the region. 'This is the historic dawn of a new Middle East,' he said." The reference to other presidents is really pretty salty for the times, although it's also an objective fact. The story goes on to say, "for all the superlatives that Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel's Prime Minister, heaped on Mr. Trump on Monday, 'Donald Trump is the greatest friend that the State of Israel has ever had in the White House,' he said, with the American president at his side, Mr. Netanyahu did not join Mr. Trump in declaring that the war in Gaza was over. Mr. Netanyahu was also absent from a high level regional summit in Egypt that was meant to discuss the future of Gaza. In attendance were Mr. Trump and more than 20 leaders from across Europe and the Middle East and the head of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas."

In the second column, the headline reference to "a time for healing" turns out to be place specific with the return of the Israeli hostages. The Times writes that "Israelis basked in a joyous moment of unifying national redemption after months of agonizing, polarizing war. The 20 living hostages who had remained in Gaza" The Times writes, "along with the remains of 28 deceased ones, remained an open wound, with the fate of the hostages tearing at the country's soul. A majority of Israelis had long wanted Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to prioritize their release with a deal to end the war, polls showed, but Mr. Netanyahu accused protesters of hardening Hamas's stance, while critics of the Prime Minister accused him, in turn, of prolonging the war to appease his far right political allies on whose support he relies to stay in power. Now, many Israelis said, with an open ended cease fire in place and all the living hostages back home it was time for the country to heal." 

The story jumps to page A9, where at the bottom of the page there's the corresponding story from the Palestinian side. "Cheering crowds greet freed Palestinians, though joy is muted for some," this page replicates the photo treatment from page one, again, the jubilant Israelis in Tel Aviv get their rapturous faces showcased up close in their individuality. The Palestinians are a huge crowd in Ramallah, most of them with their backs to the camera, facing the lens. In the foreground, there's one man riding on another man's shoulders, the man on top throwing out V for Victory signs, but he's got a cap shading his face and is still pretty small in the frame. 

Page A7 has another story from the Palestinian side. "As the dust is left to settle, Gazans see little to celebrate. Two years of war," the Times writes "left the enclave in ruins. Its cities reduced to rubble, 10s of 1000s dead, and the health system devastated. Despair and hopelessness are pervasive, and many no longer see a future. 'It's important that the bombing has stopped, but there's nothing to be happy about,' said, said Abu Aida, 44 who was displaced in central Gaza. 'My two daughters were killed. My home was destroyed, and my health has deteriorated.' Israel's military campaign against Hamas killed more than 67,000 people in Gaza, according to local health officials, their tolls do not specify the number of combatants, but they say thousands were children." Stock phrases are what gets a newspaper through. Know, a busy news writing day, but it's a little jarring to go from the uninspected phrase "Israel's military campaign against Hamas" to those numbers, and to the presence of all those children in all that rubble. At some point you have to characterize the targets and purpose of the military campaign in terms of who it hit and what it did. 

On page A8, there's a NEWS ANALYSIS piece that tries to give some perspective. "The Lost chances to reach a cease fire in a hostage deal. Why now?" the lead asks, "why did it take 736, days?" It describes an Israeli crowd being addressed by Trump's envoy, Steve Witkoff, overarching the moment the Times writes, "was the question of whether this deal could have been done far sooner, when more hostages may have been alive, and before 10s of 1000s more Palestinians were killed. That argument lay behind the booze that ran through the crowd when Mr. Witkoff mentioned Mr. Netanyahu. Hearing the reaction, Mr. Wytt cough tried to defend Mr. Netanyahu, insisting that 'I was in the trenches with the Prime Minister and saw how he was seeking a safer, stronger future for the Jewish people.' That was met with more booing." The story goes on to say, "debates over how wars could have ended sooner and saved 1000s or millions of lives are hardly new. Historians are still arguing over whether Japan would have surrendered anyway if President Harry S Truman had decided against dropping two atomic weapons, whether President Richard M Nixon waited years too long to get out of Vietnam. Both Joe Biden and Mr. Trump argued for an earlier exit from Afghanistan." Yeah. So the thing about that set of examples as precedent for this discussion is they're not really that debatable. 

The Atomic Bomb is in a somewhat different category, since it almost certainly did speed up the formal recognition of American victory, but did so through two—and never forget, they went right ahead and dropped the second bomb, before checking to see if a surrender was on the table—acts of gratuitous mass slaughter. But obviously Richard Nixon gained nothing by dragging out the Vietnam War. There's a whole thing about that. It's called the Pentagon Papers. It ran in the New York Times. In Afghanistan, as the Times said, Biden and Trump both recognized that whatever we thought we were doing there, it was years and years past working. So if those are your comps, the question of whether the hostage deal should have come sooner, is no question at all. 

Down at the bottom of the page, there's a small story by Anemona Hartocollis, "How crackdowns on campus quelled protests against the war in Gaza." It is much too short for a real examination of how American institutions of higher education were not just complicit in but actively themselves brought about the crushing of the biggest student movement since Vietnam. But since it's Anemona Hartocollis story, the brevity of the story means that the opportunities for her to take potshots at the protesters are few and far between, and the brief sketch of the overall history basically follows the shape of what actually happened, as the campuses both encouraged law enforcement intervention, and abandoned commitments to free expression that had once seemed to be part of the essence of their mission. At the end of the story, Hartocollis writes, "on the eve of the anniversary of the Hamas attack on Israel, a few dozen students at the University of California Los Angeles gathered at Royce squad, a traditional protest place, to hold a vigil for Palestinians killed in Gaza. They were met by the campus police and a warning sign. 'Individuals participating in an event or a public expression activity in this area are subject to discipline and or arrest,' the sign said." No public expression activity on the quad. 

That is the news. Thank you for listening. The Indignity Morning Podcast is edited by Joe MACLEOD. The theme song is composed and performed by Max Coco Ho. Thank you very much for listening, and if nothing unexpected gets in the way, we will talk again tomorrow.